Trauma: After the Coma
by RavenWriter89
Summary: They knew they would need time to adjust after the beach. Sometimes time isn't enough.


She watched him disappear, _again_, and stopped talking. Too much had happened, too much adrenalin had flooded her system and left her drained. No one said very much, and that made it more unnerving. The journey home was dream-like with exhaustion. They were in a car, the three of them (or was there a driver as well?), and she couldn't remember where they were or where they were going. Fatigue had fogged her mind, but she remembered turning to him. He was watching the landscape pass by and started at the sound of her voice.

"Between you and Donna, I'd've thought that gob of yours would be going non-stop."

He looked surprised, but smiled at her comment. It seemed wistful. "Guess I'm just…adjusting."

_Aren't we all,_ she thought, but said nothing else.

Home, if anything, was worse. Days passed, and she still felt drugged from exhaustion. She barely spoke to _him_. Yet he was the one who suggested the solution. Through minimal conversations, they decided to part. They would return in a year, they said, one year, and until then they could go wherever they wanted. _And do whatever they wanted_ was left unsaid, like so many things. The space would allow both of them to heal and come to terms with the world. She went to New Germany, he ran to Brazil. She lasted three months in Europe, and one in Russia. It didn't help. She finally returned home to seek some solace.

At first she thought that Jackie would understand the best. After all, her husband had died and she found him again in a parallel universe. But the separation had been too long. Jackie's memories of Pete had blurred and faded and been rewritten over the years. Both she and the person who became her husband had changed and grown. They could build anew because they had no shared history.

Relief came, surprisingly, from Jake. He found her one night curled around a cold mug and staring at the stars. He sat beside her on the porch.

"I didn't trust Mickey at first," he said after a long silence. "I had just lost my leader, my friend, my lover," he added ruefully, "and here was this, this lunatic who looked exactly like him. He sounded like him, he moved like him, he even thought like him after a fashion. I would catch myself thinking that he _was_ Ricky. Then I would remember, and it would…hurt."

She hadn't said anything so he turned towards her. "I know that it's not the same situation, but maybe the process is. You look at him and know exactly what he's going to say, but he doesn't say it. He says something similar, but not the same. Right?"

She nodded numbly. "It's like," she said, her voice harsh, "it's like he's woken up from a coma or something. What do I do?"

Jake didn't answer right away. "When you left after the cybers, he told me that he wasn't trying to replace Ricky. And he didn't. He was just himself. He didn't try to be someone else. He didn't become the person I wanted him to be. But, after a while, it worked." He leaned back and stared at the stars with her. "I miss him." At her glance he said, "Mickey, I mean. You know what the last thing he said to me was? Before he went off the save the universe? 'See you around.' Like he was coming back." Jake shook is head and laughed slightly. "But he knew. I think that was the only way he could say good-bye. Do you miss him?"

She snorted. "Which do you mean?"

"Who came to mind first?" he countered.

"We're not talking about Mickey anymore, are we?"

"Depends. Who came to mind?" he asked again.

She was silent this time. It was several minutes later when she said, "Yeah. I miss him."

It was three months after that midnight confession, seven months since he had left, that he returned. He quietly let Pete and Jackie know his whereabouts, then went to the modest flat they had set up for him. She waited until evening to find him. He stood when she entered, watching her carefully. He was browner and scruffier and, if possible, leaner.

"Hello, Rose," he said.

"It's good to see you safe," she smiled. "My Doctor."


End file.
